By Chris Kahn Staff Writer Posted
December 17 2004
Still simmering over her brother's death, Audrey Camise of Homestead looked across a Broward County courtroom Thursday and asked her old friend why he cut down Guy Sharpe and Rob Smith in an ambush two years ago outside a Denny's restaurant.
"My brother would do anything for you," Camise told Frank "Biker Joe" Piacitelli, unable to look him in the eye. "That's why this is so confusing."
Piacitelli, 48, showed no emotion as Judge Paul L. Backman agreed with a jury recommendation not to give him a death sentence for the murder of Camise's brother, Guy Sharpe, and attempted murder of Rob Smith, a house remodeler who survived the shooting but is paralyzed from the chest down.
Instead, Backman sentenced Piacitelli to two consecutive life sentences.
"If I had the power to take us back in time and prevent all of this, I would," Backman said. "But I can't."
Defense lawyer Christopher W. Pole said he planned to appeal the ruling.
Prosecutors accused Piacitelli, of Margate, and his friend Louis Demarco of attacking Sharpe and Smith on June 25, 2002. Piacitelli was a drug dealer, they said, and thought Sharpe had become a government informant. Piacitelli was convicted of first-degree and attempted first-degree murder Nov. 20.
Demarco, of Dania Bach, is awaiting trial.
Throughout the hearing, Piacitelli glared at the jury as members pondered his fate.
Before the jury walked in, he told the judge he had something impolite to say to them, but "I've been advised not to."
Pole, hoping to get a lighter sentence for his client, showed jurors pictures of Piacitelli grinning with family. His older sister, Julie Braden, told jurors how he struggled in Catholic school.
"One time I was pulled out of my fourth-grade class and brought into his third-grade class, and the nun pointed to him and said: `This is a bad boy. Be like her. Don't be like him,'" Braden said, her eyes welling with tears. "Imagine what that did to a 9-year-old psyche."
Psychologist Michael Brannon testified that Piacitelli does suffer from adult attention deficit disorder and has a severe anger disorder, but he is able to distinguish between right and wrong.
Smith, 40, who uses an electric wheelchair, sat quietly in the aisle during the hearing. Smith said he relives the shooting over and over again in his dreams and wishes Piacitelli received a death sentence.
"He basically took everything but my will to live," Smith said outside the courtroom.
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